ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents Pie o provides a wonderful biography of Jas Duke and selects additional poems to those reprinted from Duke's "poems of life and death." The accompanying compact disc is Jas Duke reading poems from the latter. thalia (internet); Jas H. Duke was born in Ballarat, Australia in 1939. Son of two schoolteachers, Irish-Scottish ancestors. His family moved to Melbourne in the 1950s. He worked as a draftsman/ a laboratory assistant/ a technical writer and dreamed of becoming a chess champion (didnt quite make it). As a substitute he read every book that he could find. In the 60's he became an Anarchist. Wrote short stories, and was desperately looking for a way to break-out! Went to England via the U S of A, where he circulated in the politico-psychedelic underground. In England he sought the commraderie of Freedom Press; met Ted Kavanagh, Cohn Bendit, Yoko Ono, and Raoul Hausmann. Jas became a political activist, and an actor who appeared in many underground movies by filmmaker Jeff Keen....

Scope and Contents

This is the major anthology of Duke's works. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.